For my internship I am working with a company in conjunction with the University of Gloucestershire called Target Worm Counts and basically I get to play with horse poo, not the most glamorous thing in the world! We look at how many worm eggs are present in a sample of horse faeces and use this to inform the owner whether they need to worm their horse or not.
Why are worm egg counts beneficial? Well, some worms are becoming resistant to certain wormers, meaning that when wormed, the worms don't die so the horse remains infested, which isn't good as it means the owner has wasted money on a wormer and will have to purchase another. So by seeing whether they need worming it saves the owner money and prevents resistance in worms to the wormers
Today we visited a small yard in the Forest of Dean, another perk is that I get to travel to different places as we carry out the tests on site so results are instant, no waiting around!
My aim of what I want to achieve by the end of this internship is to produce an information leaflet for owners on the company but also why should they use worm egg counts, what are the benefits and anything else they want to know.
My first step is going to be to produce a pilot questionnaire for horse owners on what they want to know. This is so I can produce a leaflet that contains information that they actually want to know rather than bombarding them. I will pilot it this weekend and I'll post the feedback that I receive!
Here's the website if anyone's interested or wants to know more information about Target Worm Counts
http://insight.glos.ac.uk/departments/cei/consultancy/targetworm/Pages/default.aspx (it's a bit long but I'm gonna produce a shorter one!
Target Worm counts are also on facebook Target Worm Counts
And also Twitter! @Targetwormcount
